Monday, July 24, 2017

Is Your Site or Network at Risk?

"Web security" is relative and has two components, one internal and one public. Your relative security is high if you have few network resources of financial value, your company and site aren't controversial in any way, your network is set up with tight permissions, your web server is patched up to date with all settings done correctly, your applications on the web server are all patched and updated, and your web site code is done to high standards.

Your web security is relatively lower if your company has financial assets like credit card or identity information, if your web site content is controversial, your servers, applications and site code are complex or old and are maintained by an underfunded or outsourced IT department. All IT departments are budget challenged and tight staffing often creates deferred maintenance issues that play into the hands of any who want to challenge your web security.

If you have assets of importance or if anything about your site puts you in the public spotlight then your web security will be tested. We hope that the information provided here will prevent you and your company from being embarrassed - or worse.

It's well known that poorly written software creates security issues. The number of bugs that could create web security issues is directly proportional to the size and complexity of your web applications and web server. Basically, all complex programs either have bugs or at the very, least weaknesses. On top of that, web servers are inherently complex programs. Web sites are themselves complex and intentionally invite ever greater interaction with the public. And so the opportunities for security holes are many and growing.

Technically, the very same programming that increases the value of a web site, namely interaction with visitors, also allows scripts or SQL commands to be executed on your web and database servers in response to visitor requests. Any web-based form or script installed at your site may have weaknesses or outright bugs and every such issue presents a web security risk.

Contrary to common knowledge the balance between allowing web site visitors some access to your corporate resources through a web site and keeping unwanted visitors out of your network is a delicate one. There is no one setting, no single switch to throw that sets the security hurdle at the proper level. There are dozens of settings if not hundreds in a web server alone, and then each service, application and open port on the server adds another layer of settings. And then the web site code... you get the picture.

Add to that the different permissions you will want to grant visitors, prospects, customers, partners and employees. The number of variables regarding web security rapidly escalates.

A web security issue is faced by site visitors as well. A common web site attack involves the silent and concealed installation of code that will exploit the browsers of visitors. Your site is not the end target at all in these attacks. There are, at this time, many thousands of web sites out there that have been compromised. The owners have no idea that anything has been added to their sites and that their visitors are at risk. In the meantime visitors are being subject to attack and successful attacks are installing nasty code onto the visitor's computers.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

I am often asked how I can help a customer make more sales or improve efficiency. As a web sales specialist with marketing in mind it is one of the first things I look at about a business and that is what does the web page tell me about that business. The web site today is like the yellow pages ads of yesteryear or the newspaper ads about a company. Your ad calls out in many cases to the potential customer to call. I know I often as statistics show that the big ads get your attention and draw your eye towards it. Web pages today are similar, a very well done, neat yet professional ad with nice graphics. The web site is your opening to the world and with search engines to do the work the old phrase let your fingers do the walking is true, you type what you want and up comes returns from all over the world. As a web marketeer, I look at ways to make sure that the web site meets the criteria of what the main search engines want. Make the web site fast, make it visually nice, make it interesting. Make sure internally the correct SEO programming is in place such as key words, descriptions, title tags and more. Now once the web site is done, now you have to market it correctly. The web site can be used in many ways that I will get into soon to capture leads, and to allow your customers to get important facts. I have customers that have facts about heating and cooling systems. I have customers with facts about animals. Do you want to know about electrical systems, I have customers that have facts about that. How about putting white papers about your products on line to help your customers solve problems. The web site can be your way to keep in toch with your customers and to help them.

There are many things a programmer can do to improve your web site ranking but here are a critical few:

Improve the
content focus and the format of your web pages

The content of your web pages should
align with the intent of the
searcher when the searcher visits your website after a keyword search.
Make sure that your content has a
clear structure and that the
content that the searcher is looking for is easily available on your
web pages. Use headers, sub-headers, bullet lists and tables to present
your content as clearly as possible.

Improve the
internal linking structure of your web pages

Link from your web pages to other web
pages on your website that
deal with the same topic. Link from pages that discuss the topic in
general to pages that discuss specific points in detail. Use breadcrumb
navigation to show your website visitors where they are.
The easier it is to find pages about a
particular topic on your
website, the easier it is for search engines to assign these pages to
the right search terms. The website audit tool in SEOprofiler analyzes
the internal link structure of your website.

Increase the
content length on your web pages

The more content a web page has, the
easier it is to get high
rankings (ignoring links from other websites). It is very difficult to
get high rankings for very short pages with thin content.
Make sure that your web pages contain
enough content to answer the
questions of the web page visitor. Search engines love content rich
websites that answer the questions of searchers.
The content of your web pages should
have a clear structure, and it should be easy to understand.

Improve the
mobile usability of your website

Mobile usability is very important.
Most websites get more than half
of their traffic through mobile devices. If your web pages don't look
good on mobile devices, you will lose many potential customers.
The easiest way to do this is to use a
responsive website design.
Responsive website design means that your website adapts to the size of
the screen. For example, go to www.SEOprofiler.com
and change the width of the browser window. You will see that the
design changes automatically with the size of the browser window.

Switch your
website to HTTPS

If your website uses HTTPS, you show
search engines and your users
that you're serious about data privacy. In addition, you show search
engines that you're serious about your website because you have gone
the extra mile to secure your site. Spammers usually do not do that.
Google prefers HTTPS sites. Although
HTTPs has only a minor
influence on the overall rankings, it is a signal that has a positive
effect.
The switch to HTTPS should be done by
a person who knows how to do
it. Redirect your old HTTP pages to the HTTPS version of your website
to show search engines that you prefer the HTTPS version.

Redirect
links to 404 error pages

Older websites often have hundreds of
links from other websites that
point to pages that do not exist anymore. Retain these links by
redirecting the old URLs to the URLs of the new pages of your website.
Retaining old links can have a major
influence on the rankings of
your new pages. If possible, ask the linking websites to link directly
to the new version of the pages. Check the log files of your website to
find links that point to non-existing sites on your website.

Remove errors
that prevent search engine indexing

Some errors on your web pages can keep
search engines from indexing
your website. It is very important that you remove these errors from
your website.
The website audit tool in SEOprofiler
checks your website for these errors. Check
your website to make sure that all pages can be indexed
correctly by Google and other search engines.

Resolve
duplicate content issues

Duplicate title tags on your web pages
can cause ranking problems.
In addition, Google might pick th wrong version if the same content
appears on multiple pages of your website (regular version, print
version, etc.).
Each web page should have an
individual title tag. If the same
content appears on more than one page of your website, use the
canonical tag to show search engines the version that they should index.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Posted by MiriamEllis
It’s 105 degrees outside my office right now, and the only thing
hotter in this summer of 2017 is the local SEO industry’s discussion of
review spam. It’s become increasingly clear that major review sites
represent an irresistible temptation to spammers, highlighting systemic
platform weaknesses and the critical need for review monitoring that
scales.
Just as every local brand, large and small, has had to adjust to the
reality of reviews’ substantial impact on modern consumer behavior,
competitive businesses must now prepare themselves to manage the facts
of fraudulent sentiment. Equip your team and clients with this
article, which will cover every aspect of review spam and includes a
handy list for reporting fake reviews to major platforms.

What is review spam?

A false review is one that misrepresents either the relationship of
the reviewer to the business, misrepresents the nature of the
interaction the reviewer had with the business, or breaks a guideline.
Examples:

The reviewer is actually a competitor of the business he is
reviewing; he’s writing the review to hurt a competitor and help himself

The reviewer is actually the owner, an employee, or a marketer of
the business he is reviewing; he’s falsifying a review to manipulate
public opinion via fictitious positive sentiment

The reviewer never had a transaction with the business he is
reviewing; he’s pretending he’s a customer in order to help/hurt the
business

The reviewer had a transaction, but is lying about the details of
it; he’s trying to hurt the company by misrepresenting facts for some
gain of his own

The reviewer received an incentive to write the review, monetary or
otherwise; his sentiment stems from a form of reward and is therefore
biased

The reviewer violates any of the guidelines on the platform on which
he’s writing his review; this could include personal attacks, hate
speech or advertising

All of the above practices are forbidden by the major review platforms and should result in the review being reported and removed.

What isn’t review spam?

A review is not spam if:

It’s left directly by a genuine customer who experienced a transaction

It represents the facts of a transaction with reasonable, though subjective, accuracy

It adheres to the policies of the platform on which it’s published

Reviews that contain negative (but accurate) consumer sentiment
shouldn’t be viewed as spam. For example, it may be embarrassing to a
brand to see a consumer complain that an order was filled incorrectly,
that an item was cold, that a tab was miscalculated or that a table was
dirty, but if the customer is correctly cataloging his negative
experience, then his review isn’t a misrepresentation.
There’s some inherent complexity here, as the brand and the consumer
can differ widely in their beliefs about how satisfying a transaction
may have been. A restaurant franchise may believe that its meals are
priced fairly, but a consumer can label them as too expensive. Negative
sentiment can be subjective, so unless the reviewer is deliberately misrepresenting facts and the business can prove it, it’s not useful to report this type of review as spam as it’s unlikely to be removed.

Why do individuals and businesses write spam reviews?

Unfortunately, the motives can be as unpleasant as they are multitudinous:

Protest or punishment

Consumer sentiment may sometimes appear en masse as a form of protest
against an individual or institution, as the US recently witnessed
following the election of President Trump and the ensuing avalanche of
spam reviews his various businesses received.
It should be noted here that attempting to shame a business with fake
negative reviews can have the (likely undesirable) effect of rewarding
it with high local rankings, based on the sheer number of reviews it
receives. We saw this outcome in the infamous case of the dentist who made national news and received an onslaught of shaming reviews for killing a lion.
Finally, there is the toxic reviewer,
a form of Internet troll who may be an actual customer but whose
personality leads them to write abusive or libelous reviews as a matter
of course. While these reviews should definitely be reported and removed
if they fail to meet guidelines, discussion is open and ongoing in the local SEO industry as to how to manage the reality of consumers of this type.

Public perception manipulation

This is a two-sided coin. A business can either positively review
itself or negatively review its competitors in an effort to sway
consumer perception. The latter is a particularly prevalent form of
review spam, with the GMB forum overflowing with at least 10,000 discussions of this topic. Given that respected surveys
indicate that 91% of consumers now read online reviews, 84% trust them
as much as personal recommendations and 86% will hesitate to patronize a
business with negative reviews, the motives for gaming online
sentiment, either positively or negatively, are exceedingly strong.

Wages

Expert local SEO, Mike Blumenthal, is currently doing groundbreaking work uncovering a global review spam network
that’s responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands of fake reviews.
In this scenario, spammers are apparently employed to write reviews of
businesses around the world depicting sets of transactions that not even
the most jet-setting globetrotter could possibly have experienced. As
Mike describes one such reviewer:

“She will, of course, be educated at the mortuary school in Illinois
and will have visited a dentist in Austin after having reviewed four
other dentists ... Oh, and then she will have bought her engagement ring
in Israel, and then searched out a private investigator in Kuru,
Philippines eight months later to find her missing husband. And all of
this has taken place in the period of a year, right?”

The scale of this network makes it clear that review spam has become big business.

Lack of awareness

Not all review spammers are dastardly characters. Some small-timers
are only guilty of a lack of awareness of guidelines or a lack of
foresight about the potential negative outcomes of fake reviews to their
brand. I’ve sometimes heard small local business owners state they had
their family review their newly-opened business to “get the ball
rolling,” not realizing that they were breaking a guideline and not
considering how embarrassing and costly it could prove if consumers or
the platform catch on. In this scenario, I try to teach that faking
success is not a viable business model — you have to earn it.

Lack of consequences

Unfortunately, some of the most visible and powerful review platforms
have become enablers of the review spam industry due to a lack of
guideline enforcement. When a platform fails to identify and remove fake
reviews, either because of algorithmic weaknesses or insufficient
support staffing, spammers are encouraged to run amok in an environment
devoid of consequences. For unethical parties, no further justification
for manipulating online sentiment is needed than that they can “get away
with it.” Ironically, there are consequences to bear for lack
of adequate policing, and until they fall on the spammer, they will fall
on any platform whose content becomes labeled as untrustworthy in the
eyes of consumers.

What is the scope of review spam?

No one knows for sure, but as we’ve seen, the playing field ranges
from the single business owner having his family write a couple of
reviews on Yelp to the global network employing staff to inundate Google
with hundreds of thousands of fake reviews. And, we’ve see two sides to
the review spam environment:

People who write reviews to help themselves (in terms of
positive rankings, perception, and earnings for themselves either
directly from increased visibility or indirectly via extortion, and/or
in terms of negative outcomes for competitors).

People who write reviews to hurt others (for the sake of revenge with little or no consequence).

The unifying motive of all forms of review spam is manipulation,
creating an unfair and untrustworthy playing field for consumers,
enterprises and platforms alike. One Harvard study suggests that 20% of Yelp reviews are fake,
but it would be up to the major review platforms to transparently
publicize the total number of spam reviews they receive. Just the
segment I’ve seen as an individual local SEO has convinced me that
review spam has now become an industry, just like “black hat” SEO once
did.

How to spot spam reviews

Here are some basic tips:

Strange patterns:

A reviewer’s profile indicates that they’ve been in too many
geographic locations at once. Or, they have a habit of giving 1-star
reviews to one business and 5-star reviews to its direct competitor.
While neither is proof positive of spam, think of these as possible red
flags.

Strange language:

Numerous 5-star reviews that fawn on the business owner by name (e.g.
“Bill is the greatest man ever to walk the earth”) may be fishy. If
adulation seems to be going overboard, pay attention.

Strange timing:

Over the course of a few weeks, a business skyrockets from zero
reviews to 30, 50, or 100 of them. Unless an onslaught of sentiment
stems from something major happening in the national news, chances are
good the company has launched some kind of program. If you suspect spam,
you’ll need to research whether the reviews seem natural or could be
stemming from some form of compensation.

Strange numbers:

The sheer number of reviews a business has earned seems inconsistent
with its geography or industry. Some business models (restaurants)
legitimately earn hundreds of reviews each year on a given platform, but
others (mortuaries) are unlikely to have the same pattern. If a
competitor of yours has 5x as many reviews as seems normal for your
geo-industry, it could be a first indicator of spam.

Strange "facts":

None of your staff can recall that a transaction matching the
description in a negative review ever took place, or a transaction can
be remembered but the way the reviewer is presenting it is demonstrably
false. Example: a guest claims you rudely refused to seat him, but your
in-store cam proves that he simply chose not to wait in line like other patrons.

Obvious threats:

If any individual or entity threatens your company with a negative
review to extort freebies or money from you, take it seriously and
document everything you can.

Obvious guideline violations:

Virtually every major review platform prohibits profane, obscene, and
hateful content. If your brand is victimized by this type of attack,
definitely report it.
In a nutshell, the first step to spotting review spam is
review monitoring. You’ll want to manually check direct competitors for
peculiar patterns, and, more importantly, all local businesses must have
a schedule for regularly checking their own incoming sentiment. For
larger enterprises and multi-location business models, this process must
be scaled to minimize manual workloads and cover all bases.

Scaling review management

On an average day, one Moz Local
customer with 100 retail locations in the U.S. receives 20 reviews
across the various platforms we track. Some are just ratings, but many
feature text. Many are very positive. A few contain concerns or
complaints that must be quickly addressed to protect reputation/budget
by taking action to satisfy and retain an existing customer while
proving responsiveness to the general consumer public. Some could turn
out to be spam.
Over the course of an average week for this national brand, 100–120
such reviews will come in, totaling up to more than 400 pieces of
customer feedback in a month that must be assessed for signs of success
at specific locations or emerging quality control issues at others.
Parse this out to a year’s time, and this company must be prepared to
receive and manage close to 5,000 consumer inputs in the form of reviews
and ratings, not just for positive and negative sentiment, but for the purposes of detecting spam.
Spam detection starts with awareness, which can only come from the
ability to track and audit a large volume of reviews to identify some of
the suspicious hallmarks we’ve covered above. At the multi-location or
enterprise level, the solution to this lies in acquiring review
monitoring software and putting it in the hands of a designated
department or staffer. Using a product like Moz Local, monitoring and
detection of questionable reviews can be scaled to meet the needs of
even the largest brands.

What should your business do if it has been victimized by review spam?

Once you’ve become reasonably certain that a review or a body of
reviews violates the guidelines of a specific platform, it’s time to
act. The following list contains links to the policies of 7 dominant
review platforms that are applicable to all industries, and also
contains tips and links outlining reporting options:

Google

Review reporting tips

Flag the review by mousing
over it, clicking the flag symbol that appears and then entering your
email address and choosing a radio button. If you’re the owner, use the
owner response function to mention that you’ve reported the review to
Google for guideline violations. Then, contact GMB support via their Twitter account and/or post your case in the GMB forum to ask for additional help. Cross your fingers!

Yelp

Review reporting tips

Yelp offers these guidelines for reporting reviews
and also advises owners to respond to reviews that violate guidelines.
Yelp takes review quality seriously and has set high standards other
platforms might do well to follow, in terms of catching spammers and
warning the public against bad actors.

Facebook

Review reporting tips

Here are Facebook’s instructions for reporting reviews
that fail to meet community standards. Note that you can only report
reviews with text — you can’t report solo ratings. Interestingly, you
can turn off reviews on Facebook, but to do so out of fear would be to
forego the considerable benefits they can provide.

Yellow Pages

Review reporting tips

In 2016, YP.com began showing TripAdvisor reviews alongside internal
reviews. If review spam stems from a YP review, click the “Flag” link in
the lower right corner of the review and fill out the form to report
your reasons for flagging. If the review spam stems from TripAdvisor,
you’ll need to deal with them directly and read their extensive guidelines,
TripAdvisor states that they screen reviews for quality purposes, but
that fake reviews can slip through. If you’re the owner, you can report
fraudulent reviews from the Management Center of your TripAdvisor
dashboard. Click the “concerned about a review” link and fill out the
form. If you’re simply a member of the public, you’ll need to sign into
TripAdvisor and click the flag link next to the review to report a
concern.

SuperPages

Review reporting tips

The policy I’ve linked to (from Dex Media, which owns SuperPages) is
the best I can find. It’s reasonably thorough but somewhat broken. To
report a fake review to SuperPages, you’ll need either a SuperPages or
Facebook account. Then, click the “flag abuse” link associated with the
review and fill out a short form.

CitySearch

Review reporting tips

If you receive a fake review on CitySearch, email customerservice@citygrid.com.
In your email, link to the business that has received the spam review,
include the date of the review and the name of the reviewer and then
cite the guidelines you feel the review violates.

FourSquare

Review reporting tips

The “Rules and Conduct” section I’ve linked to in Foursquare’s TOS
outlines their content policy. Foursquare is a bit different in the
language they use to describe tips/reviews. They offer these suggestions for reporting abusive tips.
*If you need to find the guidelines and reporting options for an
industry-specific review platform like FindLaw or HealthGrades, Phil Rozek’s definitive list will be a good starting point for further research.

Review spam can feel like being stuck between a rock and a hard place

I feel a lot of empathy in this regard. Google, Facebook, Yelp, and
other major review platforms have the visibility to drive massive
traffic and revenue to your enterprise. That’s the positive side of this
equation. But there’s another side — the uneasy side that I believe has
its roots in entities like Google originating their local business
index via aggregation from third party sources, rather than as a print
YellowPages-style, opt-in program, and subsequently failing to
adequately support the millions of brands it was then representing to
the Internet public.
To this day, there are companies that are stunned to discover that
their business is listed on 35 different websites, and being actively
reviewed on 5 or 10 of them when the company took no action to initiate
this. There’s an understandable feeling of a loss of control that can be
particularly difficult for large brands, with their carefully planned
quality structures, to adjust to.
This sense of powerlessness is further compounded when the business
isn’t just being listed and discussed on platforms it doesn’t control,
but is being spammed. I’ve seen business owners on Facebook declaring they’ve decided to disable reviews
because they feel so victimized and unsupported after being inundated
with suspicious 1-star ratings which Facebook won’t investigate or
remove. By doing so, these companies are choosing to forego the considerable benefits reviews drive because meaningful processes for protecting the business aren’t yet available.
These troubling aspects of the highly visible world of reviews can
leave owners feeling like they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Their companies will be listed, will be reviewed, and may be spammed whether the brand actively participates or not, and they may or may not be able to get spam removed.
It’s not a reality from which any competitive enterprise can opt-out,
so my best advice is to realize that it’s better to opt-in fully, with
the understanding that some control is better than none. There are
avenues for getting many spam reviews taken down, with the right
information and a healthy dose of perseverance. Know, too, that every
one of your competitors is in the same boat, riding a rising tide that
will hopefully grow to the point of offering real-world support for
managing consumer sentiment that impacts bottom-line revenue in such a
very real way.

“Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce,
and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are
hereby declared unlawful.”

Provisions like these are what allowed the FTC to successfully sue Sage Automotive Group for $3.6 million dollars for deceptive advertising practices and deceptive online reviews,
but it’s important to note that this appears to be the first instance
in which the FTC has involved themselves in bringing charges on the
basis of fraudulent reviews. At this point, it’s simply not reasonable
to expect the FTC to step in if your enterprise receives some suspicious
reviews, unless your research should uncover a truly major case.
Lawsuits amongst platforms, brands, and consumers, however, are proliferating. Yelp has sued agencies and local businesses over the publication of fake reviews. Companies have sued their competitors over malicious, false sentiment, and they’ve sued their customers with allegations of the same.
Should your enterprise be targeted with spam reviews, some cases may
be egregious enough to warrant legal action. In such instances,
definitely don’t attempt to have the spam reviews removed by the host
platform, as they could provide important evidence. Contact a lawyer
before you take a step in any direction, and avoid using the owner
response function to take verbal revenge on the person you believe has
spammed you, as we now have a precedent in Dietz v. Perez for such cases being declared a draw.
In many scenarios, however, the business may not wish to become
involved in a noisy court battle, and seeking removal can be a quieter
way to address the problem.

Local enterprises, consumers, and marketers must advocate for themselves

According to one survey, 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business.
If some of those 10 reviews are the result of negative spam, the cost
to the business is simply too high to ignore, and it’s imperative that
owners hold not just spammers, but review platforms, accountable.
Local businesses, consumers, and marketers don’t own review sites, but they do
have the power to advocate. A single business could persistently blog
about spam it has documented. Multiple businesses could partner up to
request a meeting with a specific platform to present pain points.
Legitimate consumers could email or call their favorite platforms to
explain that they don’t want their volunteer hours writing reviews to be
wasted on a website that is failing to police its content. Marketers
can thoughtfully raise these issues repeatedly at conferences attended
by review platform reps. There is no cause to take an adversarial tone
in this, but there is every need for squeaky wheels to highlight the
costliness of spam to all parties, advocating for platforms to devote
all possible resources to:

Increasing the sophistication of algorithmic spam detection

Increasing staffing for manual detection

Providing real-time support to businesses so that spam can be reported, evaluated and removed as quickly as possible

All of the above could begin to better address the reality of review spam. In the meantime, if your business is being targeted right now,
I would suggest using every possible avenue to go public with the
problem. Blog, use social media, report the issue on the platform’s
forum if it has one. Do anything you can to bring maximum attention to
the attack on your brand. I can’t promise results from persistence and
publicity, but I’ve seen this method work enough times to recommend it.

Why review platforms must act aggressively to minimize spam

I’ve mentioned the empathy I feel for owners when it comes to review
platforms, and I also feel empathy for the platforms, themselves. I’ve
gotten the sense, sometimes, that different entities jumped into the
review game and have been struggling to handle its emerging complexities
as they’ve rolled out in real time. What is a fair and just policy? How
can you best automate spam detection? How deeply should a platform be
expected to wade into disputes between customers and brands?
With sincere respect for the big job review sites have on their hands, I think it’s important to state:

If brands and consumers didn’t exist, neither would review
platforms. Businesses and reviewers should be viewed and treated as
MVPs.

Platforms which fail to offer meaningful support options to business owners are not earning goodwill or a good reputation.

The relationship between local businesses and review platforms isn’t
an entirely comfortable one. Increasing comfort could turn wary brands
into beneficial advocates.

Platforms that allow themselves to become inundated with spam will
lose consumers’ trust, and then advertisers’ trust. They won’t survive.

Every review platform has a major stake in this game, but, to be perfectly honest, some of them don’t act like it.
Google My Business Forum Top Contributor and expert Local SEO, Joy Hawkins, recently wrote an open letter to Google
offering them four actionable tips for improving their handling of
their massive review spam problem. It’s a great example of a marketer
advocating for her industry, and, of interest, some of Joy’s best advice
to Google is taken from Yelp’s own playbook. Yelp may be doing the best
of all platforms in combating spam, in that they have very strong
filters and place public warnings on the profiles of suspicious
reviewers and brands.
What Joy Hawkins, Mike Blumenthal, other industry experts, and local
business owners seem to be saying to review platforms could be summed up
like this:

“We recognize the power of reviews and appreciate the benefits they
provide, but a responsibility comes with setting your platform up as a
hub of reputation for millions of businesses. Don’t see spammed
reputations as acceptable losses — they represent the livelihoods of
real people. If you’re going to trade responsibly in representing us,
you’ve got to back your product up with adequate quality controls and
adequate support. A fair and trustworthy environment is better for us,
better for consumers and better for you.”

Key takeaways for taking control of review spam

All local enterprises need to know that review spam is a real problem

Its scope ranges from individual spammers to global networks

Enterprises must monitor all incoming reviews, and scale this with software where necessary

Designated staff must be on the lookout for suspicious patterns

All major review platforms have some form of support for reporting
spam reviews, but its not always adequate and may not lead to removal

Because of this, brands must advocate for better support from review platforms

Review platforms need to listen and act, because their stake in game is real

Being the subject of a review spam attack can be a stressful event
that I wish no brand ever had to face, but it’s my hope that this
article has empowered you to meet a possible challenge with complete
information and a smart plan of action.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

If you look at web sites today you can see how many of them have been slapped together with the same old cookie cutter approach. I will admit that at times we use that approach because the customer says that is what they want to see or their competitor is like that so we want to be like that. Many of these sites are pretty but they lack in my belief personality and sell power. Many are too congested and lack the draw of the eye to where you want them to go and that is to order or to call. We believe that your web site should tell a story about you and sell your experience and quality and give reasons to buy. Many times companies forget just how good they are! You get caught up in the day to day hassle that you forget that one of your selling points is that you have been in business for a long time and do quality work. You should share how you take care of customer needs. You should tell the world reasons why buying from you is better than buying form a company in China or any other country. Tell the story how your products save time and money for a customer. Remember your web site is an extension of you and your business, you built it from the ground up in many cases and it is you so tell them why you are proud to buy from you!

I really believe this and I believe it is what keeps me going and that is I know we can help a business prosper and have helped many in the past. I am proud of my company, remember to be proud of yours.

SEO prices: What determines cost?

Only by looking at these three elements can any agency calculate how much SEO should cost for your business

By analyzing a client’s current situation, understanding their objectives and determining the required timeline, we can calculate a price. There are lots of variables here, and we don’t always know what our competitors are doing, but an attempt should be made to calculate the level of work required and subsequent price.
And of course, the industry will in part determine costs. If you make $100 from a new customer, you can expect to pay less than if a customer is worth several thousand dollars. The marketplace, to some extent, regulates price (assuming the work is done properly). It is all about return on investment.
The last variable is maintenance and keeping your flag flying once visibility has been achieved. SEO is a moving target. You step up your game, and the competition does the same. It’s tough, and the best approaches need to be tailored to the unique situation and goals of the business.

Remember SEO and ranking is a constantly moving target. Sometimes rankings can change in the blink of your eye. Remember that you are not the only one trying to rank better. ROI is important and one way to get a feel is by having good reporting. Good reporting will show you at least to a point where the clicks are coming from. How much then do I spend on AD Words? This is a tough subject because when I tell a client that he or she must spend $500.00 to $1000.00 per month minimum some get scared away but think about what you pay some companies that promise you leads? I know that some companies will charge you minimum pricing starting at $10,000.00! So paying an SEO person $500 to $1000.00 to try for a month or two might be better then shelling out $10,000.00 in one shot.

Remember there is more than one choice for pay per clicks. Google does not have it all! You can try Bing they are pretty darn good too. How about ads on Face book? Have you thought about doing a PR on line release to reach hundreds if not thousands of editors. You have many choices and spending your money in one spot may not be the best possible choice. I suggest not putting your eggs in one basket, you can see those eggs be eaten up by a predator!

I suggest using multiple methods to bring in leads and yes use Ad Words but be careful. We use multiple methods to bring in leads. One thing is be an expert and let people know it via a blog. Connect with your customers via e-mail and let them know you offer new ways to help them.

Help your customer solve problems and you will have a satisfied customer for a long time.

The New Old Guard: Symantec And McAfee Fight To Regain Dominance In The New World Of Security

In the security market, what's old is new again.
Symantec and McAfee, two companies that 10 years ago were at the vanguard of the war against email threats in the PC era, have since lost ground in the IT security market to a slew of hot startups with next-generation technology. But the giants are not content to sleep, and now both are trying for a comeback.
With a focus on new technology that goes well beyond anti-virus as well as robust channel strategies and road maps for innovation to challenge their younger rivals, Symantec CEO Greg Clark and McAfee CEO Chris Young believe their respective companies are poised to once again dominate the security space.
As fate would have it, the two security stalwarts have arrived at this point in their journeys at the same time, both looking to architect resurgences after a series of spinouts, acquisitions and senior management changes.
"This is an important transformation that we're going through," Young told CRN. "Cybersecurity is maturing and we're going to see that in five years it's going to be very different than it is today. … We aim to help define that future in a meaningful way. We won't rest until we get there."

That's a future Symantec also is bidding to define, Clark said, transforming its business and bringing to the table its own vision of what that future looks like for customers and partners.
"We have done a very strong transformation, acquisition and repositioning of Symantec for our enterprise customers around integrated cyberdefense, which we're doing very well at," Clark said. "We put those things together and we have a fantastic growth engine for the long haul."
It's clear why Symantec and McAfee are both looking to win in the space—the security market is growing at a rapid pace, expected to hit $202.4 billion by 2021, up from $122.5 billion in 2016, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets.
However, both companies have seen drastic declines in their share of the security software market in recent years, according to research firm Gartner.
In 2005, Symantec held the top spot with 32.2 percent of the worldwide security software market by revenue, and McAfee held 12.4 percent at No. 2, with both seeing double-digit year-over-year growth, according to Gartner. Ten years later, Symantec and McAfee (then known as Intel Security) still owned the top two spots in the security software, but their share of the market had dropped dramatically: After three consecutive years of revenue decline, Symantec held 15.2 percent of the worldwide security software market in 2015, while McAfee was at 7.9 percent after a year-over-year revenue dip.